The Devil and Daniel Webster

In the Christian mythology that “The Devil and Daniel Webster” and other Faust stories draw on, the Devil embodies ultimate evil. Scratch, however, seems to embody a specifically American form of evil. This is the thrust of Scratch’s claim that he ought to be considered an American citizen:

When the first wrong was done to the first Indian, I was there. When the first slaves put out for the Congo, I stood on her deck. […] ‘Tis true the North claims me for a Southerner, and the South for a Northerner, but I am neither. I am merely an honest American like yourself (6).

Scratch here cites the genocide of Indigenous Americans and the enslavement of Africans as his work (indeed his reference to Stone as his “property” renders the association between slavery and the Devil closer still). Just as importantly, he implies that these sins are what it means to be American, to the extent that they unite even the North and South in shared guilt.

Nor is this the only way in which the story Americanizes the Devil. Where many Faust figures make a deal with the Devil in exchange for otherworldly knowledge and eternal life, Stone agrees to Scratch’s bargain for monetary gain.